About 460 million years ago, bizarre soft-bodied creatures puttered through the depths of an ocean that covered what is now Wales. They propelled themselves with undulating, rounded flaps that waved over pairs of stumpy legs and probed the water with spike-studded snouts.
Scientists recently discovered two fossilized specimens of these ancient and peculiar organisms, describing one of them as a new species. The fossils, which were excavated from a Welsh quarry on private land, provide an unusually well-preserved glimpse of these wee weirdos and offer clues about the vanished world that they inhabited during the Ordovician period (485.4 million to 443.8 million years ago).
In some ways, the newfound fossils resemble an animal group known as opabiniids, a genus that emerged more than half a billion years ago during a period known as the Cambrian explosion, a period during which an unparalleled diversity of life exploded over 20 million years (a relatively brief span of geologic time). Right now, scientists aren't sure whether the newly described species are opabiniids or unrelated lookalikes.
